In 1981, Rupert Sheldrake created a storm of controversy with his book A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation, which put forward a radically new understanding of nature. Now, in The Presence of the Past, he proposes that what we usually think of as the laws of nature may be more like habits.

Dr Sheldrake’s theory is that memory is inherent in nature. He suggests that all natural systems, from crystals to termites to rabbits, inherit a collective memory of their kind. Each system is shaped by ‘morphic fields’ containing a collective or pooled memory. Thus, rabbits are rabbit-shaped not only because their DNA encodes their proteins but also because nature has a rabbit-habit, a rabbit field that informs their growth and instinctive behaviour. According to the hypothesis of formative causation, this inherent memory depends on morphic resonance, a process that involves action at a distance in both space and time. Far from being stored as material traces within our brains, our own memories result from our tuning in to ourselves in the past.

In The Presence of the Past, Rupert Sheldrake lays out the evidence for, and the implications of his provocative hypothesis. He traces it through the shapes of molecules and crystals, plants, animals, patterns of instinctive behaviour, memory , social organization, myths and rituals, and the development of science itself. His ideas offer a revolutionary alternative to the mechanistic world-view; they point towards a new understanding of the nature of life, matter and mind.

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